Time Sands Still
by Mandolina Lightrobber
Summary: Sand clocks were made to turn - Bakura is convinced of this. Yami Bakura. Mai Kuyaku. Conceitshipping.
1. Time Sands Still

**A/N:** For the YGO writing contest's (here on FF-net) Season 8.5 where my second chosen pairing was Conceitshipping – Yami Bakura x Kuyaku Mai. Participation in this contest is supposed to be challenging - and it is, as I didn't feel this pairing at all - so here goes my attempt at trying to work it out somehow. Things worth noting: I cling to canon personalities as much as possible, and my written English is a hot mess of British and American spellings - do forgive if it throws you for a loop/confuses you. (Please do point out the inaccuracies/slip-ups either in a PM or a review.)

This particular writing style I usually reserve for my Kuroshitsuji fics, what with demons and headcanons, but I feel it is appropriate here, as both Mai and Bakura are in their soul forms in the Shadow Realm. Thus, the need for something static, something _here and now_, which the chosen tense is supposed to encompass. Do forgive if I do the occasional tense-flip somewhere – I'm not a magician, I'm still learning. (But I think I managed to weed all of them out.)

**Disclaimer:** Kazuki Takahashi and all associated companies are the rightful owners of the Yuugiou! franchise and I claim no association with any of them. No copyright infringement intended with this and no money is being made from this. Please support the creator by purchasing the official releases.

**Warnings:** worksafe; nothing explicitly violent or sexual.

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><p><strong>Time Sands Still<strong>

From her cursed pedestal up high, Mai watches her friends on the only small island of light in the otherwise enveloping darkness – though she doesn't remember that they are friends; and that they are _hers_. They seem so happy to her; so careless and carefree, and unaware that she is right there, right next to them. (_Just one look away and if they look up at just the right angle…_) She watches her friends that used to be in the life that could have been. She is silent now. Silent and _tired_, besides. Earlier she called out to them, screamed for help, and pounded and scratched the glass until her nails broke and her fists bled. She did so for a long, long time, but all that was a good while ago. She screamed and screamed, and screamed until fine dusty sand chafed her throat and stung her eyes. (_Her voice broke and tears unnumbered ran down her cheeks, drying up in the sand slowly rising up around her. But it was the sand. Only the sand. Never her._)

They don't see her. They don't hear her. In the beginning, they did look up, giving her hope, but the sun was in their eyes and they couldn't quite – _no_, Mai corrects herself tiredly (_so, so tired; she should sleep a bit, but in sleep there lies danger and fear_) – Malik is right. They _wouldn't_ see her. Won't look at her anymore. Malik's words are true, she concludes, fine golden sand running through her hair and whispering gently in her ears, and when she glances down at where her knees should be, all she sees is gold. Her eyes are blurry and in some twisted thought blossoming in her increasingly emptying mind it appears to be her hair coiling around her so softly and infinitely – but a heavy burden to bear. (_When did it get so long?_ she wonders blearily, and – _I should probably cut it; it's becoming a mess_.) A mess, just like her life.

Mai doesn't like mess. She doesn't like her life: there are too many pieces slipping away from her, sifting through her fingers without end and she can't catch them all anymore, can't hold onto them. Can't _save_ any of them. _Why are there so many? _she thinks, a weak frown creasing her forehead. Have there _been_ so… many? Why doesn't she remember; why doesn't she know what these fragments of forgotten thought in her hand are? (_Sand and dust, dust and sand; the golden hue of silence – sifting, shifting, disappearing._)

Mai is drowning, but she doesn't remember it. She knows it's important – what's in her hand right now – that it has a meaning, a very important meaning, but she doesn't remember what it is and why it is. She holds onto the sand, not remembering that there were memories once – for her to hold on to. Sand is her lifeline – the last one she has left, and it's running out, running all over her, running her into nothingness. She would scream, but her voice is gone; buried under the golden dust. She would cry, but her tears have all dried up in the desert winds that blow weaker and weaker. And the wind is her breath, running shorter by the moment. She is still alive, but she doesn't remember that. She doesn't remember the meaning, the significance, the life. She doesn't remember ever remembering.

This, for Bakura, is an amusing find. He has always known that the Shadows reign over a vast expanse; that they take up as much space as they want, can, and are able to. Shadows creep into every crack, every corner – even the tiniest. He knows because he is a part of it. He is infinite. He has lived amid them for millennia to the point where he can't tell anymore where he ends and where the Shadows begin. This is home for him. And finding abnormalities in his home is easier than easy for him: he felt Malik's presence and he felt the influence left behind by him. When it didn't dissipate, he went looking, curious to see what his nemesis was stirring up.

Observing from the safe veil of shadows was his initial intention, but the illusion opening up in the glow of the golden eye (_masquerading as a sun, how contrived!_) – and the sight of Yuugi and his little group of _familiars_ performing a routine waltz over and over again for a sole spectator who doesn't even seem to be aware of it – is quite boring and something, he feels, that needs a little bit of… _polishing_. _(But_ _then, Malik's Darkness was a _child_. What more could one expect of a little brat?_)

And so Bakura intervenes. He saunters up to the pyramidal sand clock and stands in front of it where its prisoner can see him. But she doesn't even look up. She doesn't know that something has forced its way into the golden-hued hell spinning for her with treads stronger than the will to live. Bakura doesn't want to speak out, to draw her attention with his voice. He wants _her_ to speak him up first. So he raps the glass with spindly fingers and it shimmers, but the prisoner inside it doesn't even budge. Bakura frowns and tries again. And again. After a while, Mai becomes aware of the sound and tilts her head sideways, finally noticing the shadow over her. She looks up and Bakura stares down at her.

"Help me," she groans out, lifting her hand up and pressing it against glass. (_Reaches out to him, but cannot quite _reach.) Sand falls around it, leaving her skin dusty and dull, and her bones seem almost too heavy for her to carry.

"Help me," she whispers and her eyes are pleading – borderline despair.

Bakura tilts his head curiously and sees how to uproot this piece of magic – it's being weakened because its caster's presence is gone. It's just a piece of his will trailing behind, and will doesn't do much in the long term. But he doesn't want to. He'll let his enemy bask in his victory for the time being. The foolish need not be taught of their foolishness.

"Why?" he asks instead.

"Help me," she repeats. She doesn't understand his question. She doesn't remember how to understand it. "Why won't you help me?"

"You belong here," Bakura points out. "Why should I let you out?"

"Who are you?" Mai forces out this question, vaguely remembering that it is important to know. She doesn't have a memory of him; she doesn't know him. (_Why is her mind so… so…_)

"I am you," Bakura sneers. "And they," he points down at the flock of illusory people below them, "are you too."

"But…" she tries to insist – _I am here_ – but the words die on her lips. She doesn't remember. Where is she? What is she? Maybe she is standing over there, looking down at… At what? What is down? She glances one level below her and sees…

Something moves inside her. A whisper or a ghost of a memory, but she knows that those things – _people_ – down there belong to her. They are _hers_. (_Memories, yes, but she has forgotten all of that_.)

"Look," Bakura says, pointing down at one of them, and with a splash and a desperate gurgle one piece disappears below the surface. Sinks, and sinks, and sinks, and black hair billow in the water like windblown.

Mai chokes. She feels the water rising high, the pressure crushing her, and she _can't breathe_. She tries to claw her way back up to the surface, but the water is too solid and her hands pound uselessly against it.

"That part of you is gone," Bakura informs her simply and watches her gasp for breath, her mouth flapping desperately – like that of a fish pulled out of water. (_But River is deep and there are creatures there with sharp, sharp teeth. Sobek is biding his time in its depths, eager to swallow those who trespass into his realm_.) A wicked smile pulls at Bakura's lips and he can't find a reason to suppress it.

"Look," he says again and Mai gasps, her body jerking in the sand.

Just below the water's surface, a crocodile has latched onto the legs of another fragment of her memories, of her, and tears it apart. Another piece disappears, a trail of red marring the perfect blue of the water, and Mai screams in pain, struggles to get away from the sharp teeth ripping into her flesh, but something keeps her trapped. (_Oh, right… a crocodile just bit her legs off; she can't swim anymore. But that thought is vague and untrue, and it fades the moment it crosses her mind, all forgotten._)

She comes back up, gasping for air, reeling from the pain, and she doesn't understand _why_.

"Look," Bakura says again and another part of her severs. The pain is too real. The feeling of dying – too overwhelming. She doesn't know why, she doesn't remember what for, but she only remembers the death.

"_Look_." Like another death toll ringing through the air. "_Look_." Like a heart-stopping drum rising to a crescendo before breaking off to leave only booming silence behind. "_Look_." And her lifeline is so thin, it sings a high-pitched tone upon snapping. The last grains of sand fall down. The sand clock has stopped.

(_But it mustn't stop, no, no._)

Both palms against the shimmering glass for leverage, and Bakura pushes it over. Like a pendulum the pyramidal clock swings – and turns upside-down. _The flow of time must not be stopped_, Bakura smirks. The wheel of Fortune is forever in motion: up-down, up-down, down-up. The laws of eternity must not be defied. The natural order of things must not be denied.

(_Let the sand run._)

As the sand begins to sift down, Bakura leans back against the glass. What a fortunate find this is, he muses. So infinitely better than lurking in the shadows, entertaining the great Nothing. Behind him, time is sifting like fine golden sand, uncovering secrets, unravelling the beauty and nostalgia of bygones, and bringing forth a promise of an endless spiral. Time must not be stopped. Sand clocks were made to turn.

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><p><em>AN:_

**River** – the Ancient Egyptian way of referring to the Nile.

**Sobek** – the god of crocodiles and Nile; deeply feared and revered as the patron of Nile, and later associated with warriors, creation, and fertility due to evolving interpretations over the course of dynasties. Egyptian mythology is one hot mess, let me tell you.

_Sources cited_: Wikipedia and "Der Bildhauer des Pharao" by Elisabeth Hering


	2. So Swings the Wheel Forth

**A/N:** This is the part that didn't make it within the limits of the deadline. Because I felt that "For some reason I thought the deadline was on the 7th and didn't bother to double-check" was not a viable/acceptable reason to ask for an extension. Also, I feel it's safe to post it now, as the voting has ended and nobody can be influenced by this part, derailing the actual contest entry.

**Disclaimer:** Kazuki Takahashi and all associated companies are the rightful owners of the Yuugiou! franchise and I claim no association with any of them. No copyright infringement intended with this and no money is being made from this. Please support the creator by purchasing the official releases.

**Warnings:** worksafe for the most part; contains some slightly disturbing imagery.

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><p><strong>So Swings the Wheel Forth<strong>

At one point the sand stops falling through from the top half into the bottom part. It takes Bakura a while to notice, but once he does, he turns to inspect it, to find the reason _why_. A single blonde curl hangs down the narrow opening – golden like threaded sand suspended by higher forces, as if Ra's thousand hands reaching down from the sky to touch everything on the ground in his mercy. (_How ironic it is, then, that the Sun god himself is the reason why this woman is trapped here – she who dared to call forth a deity without believing it_. _It makes Bakura think back on how similar they are – challenging things they had no faith in_.) Pulled down with the weight of the sand, coerced through the narrow opening by the sifting grains to stop their ceaseless flow altogether – it hangs there as a significant meaning, as a hyperbole and premonition.

Bakura can see Mai's shins atop the reversed pyramidal pile of sand, a dusty golden hue covering them. The sand has sagged, bringing her soul down with its weight. _It must be uncomfortable, being bent and contorted like that_, a thought flashes across Bakura's mind before he frowns. She has stopped the time with a single strand of golden hair. She has defied the cycle of spirals and all forward motion. She makes things _stagnate_ and Bakura snarls. He can't turn the angular hourglass back around – time doesn't go backwards – and he can't break it – can't destroy the time itself like this. (_If he does, Malik will know instantly; will feel that his little piece of dominion has been broken and will come looking. Bakura doesn't want that _child_ poking around._) Instead, he turns back around, leans against the shimmering glass and taps.

_Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap. Tap. Ta-tap. Tap tap. Ta-ta-tap._

He knows that Mai can feel it, as he can feel the rhythm reverberate across the glass and down his own ghostly spine. Mai hasn't realised that she is just a soul in this world of Shadows. She clings to her humanity and that humanity now keeps her in an illusion – an illusion that she can't breathe, that she can't see, that she is unconscious, that she is _dead_.

_Tap. Ta-tap. Tap tap tap. Ta-ta-ta-ta-tap._

It's a melody from Bakura's past, what he's drumming out for her, for continuity, for time – to make it move forward again. He heard it once in his life and he doesn't remember the words, but he does remember the tone and the beat. It isn't a song for the dead, or the living. In fact, it isn't a song at all. It is – was – is, again, a prayer. (_La-aa. La la-aa la. La la la-aa-a._) In its time, priestesses sang it to their goddess; sang, and sang, and sang, moments before Bakura and his men pillaged the temple, turning songs of glory and worship into screams of anguish, pain, and despair. (_La-aa. La-aa. La-aa-aa-a_.) They took gold, jewels, and slaves, tearing the yet-untainted women away from their sanctuary; and the song was never heard again in this world or any other. (_La la. La-aa. La-aa la-aa-a_.) Until now.

The rhythm breaks, derails, and for a moment is just a flurry of wild raps, as Bakura _remembers_. The memory is so brittle that it shatters from his vengeance and bloodthirst, distorting the melody. He doesn't hasten to straighten it out again, fuming for the glory taken away from him by a foolish pharaoh.

_T__a-tap. Tap ta-tap._

Finally, there is motion behind him. Slow and sluggish at first, weighed down by the sand, and barely noticeable, but it soon grows erratic. Desperate. There come thumps and bumps, and weak scratching. The golden lock slowly pulls back upwards (_Ra retracting his hands, his mercy_), permitting the flow of sand, of time, at long last. There come coughs, and wheezes, and chokes, and Mai claws her way up through the sand. A monstrous effort that is – digging herself out in that narrow space between five walls of shimmering glass. For her, it's like crawling out of a grave. She hits her head on the glass above, becoming completely disoriented again. She hurts, aches all over, can't breathe, can't breathe, _can't breathe_. Sand is still heavy against her face and rough against her skin.

Bakura laughs in hilarity, ceasing the tapping. He laughs, and laughs, and cannot stop. Behind him, Mai coughs and struggles to not sink back down in the sand. (_In time and oblivion._) It takes a while for the shock of death and rebirth to wear off. It takes Mai a while to see and realise what this is, _why_ this is, and the terror of memories strikes her like a double-edged swords. Strikes her and cleaves her apart. She remembers. (_She remembers, remembers, remembers_.)

Her fists rise through the sand to pound against the glass while a myriad of grains streams down her skin (_she remembers doing this_), but the sand is falling away from her, not onto her. She opens her mouth to scream and demand in fear: _let me out, let me out, LET ME OUT_! She _remembers_. The turned backs, the silent non-answers a clear indication of 'no' – she remembers that too. Memories of despair, of abandonment, and of impending death weigh her down heavily; and more so when her mind tells her that it's a perfect replay of what already was. Has been. Will be. _Is_. Sand is receding, uncovering her centimetre by precious centimetre, but she has already been tainted with its touch: her skin painted golden by dust, her hair full of miniature grains, and her bones leaden with its weight. She can't escape anymore.

"Look at me!" she demands, screams, cries, and her hands pound the glass where Bakura is leaning against it, but doesn't look at her. Doesn't look back. She's not even a second thought for him. (_For anyone_.)

Bakura laughs, but Mai doesn't understand why.

"You're awfully loud," he finally comments, his laughter ceasing, "for somebody dead."

"I'm not! _I'm not!_ Let me out!" Mai argues. (_She can't be! Can she?_)

The sand keeps falling down undisturbed, if a little faster now because of her constant moving. The glass is slippery and she keeps sliding down it, sinking into the sand, until she wrestles herself into a position that is stable, but not comfortable in the slightest.

Her friends, she discovers, are still below her; still basking in each other's presence and hoisting their ignorance of her existence and her predicament high like a banner. But when Mai looks down at them, trying to see who they are – trying to _remember_ them – their faces change. Their expressions morph, and twist, and reform. Where there was variety before, now there are heads with blonde curls and lithe bodies dressed in familiar purple: _one, two three, four, five_…

With a choked sob, Mai whips her head away from the sight so fiercely, violently, _defiantly_ that she gets hair in her eyes and stars flash across the edges of her vision. That is good because she doesn't see. Doesn't have to see. Doesn't want to. But she sees, nevertheless. Against the glass; a wild array of blonde curls, a purple set of robes that's all too familiar, and a slender leg propped up against one sloping side, the high heel sharp and flawless. Light glints off that heel and it appears to be winking at her. Mai screams. She squeezes her eyes shut (tightly, tightly) and screams, screams, screams.

"_I am you_." It echoes across her mind. Across time. "_And they are you too_."

"Do you understand now?" Bakura asks, but his voice is distant and doesn't quite reach her.

Mai doesn't respond. Her scream has died out; her fists have been pulled away from the glass and are held against her chest instead – just in case the touch burns. Just in case touching the glass where she is leaning against it on the other side unravels something in time and makes it snap.

The sand is almost gone from the inversed pyramid when the Bakura-Mai finally shifts. The motion draws Mai's attention and she finds herself looking over, looking at herself up close. But if it's supposed to be her, if it's supposed to be a mirror reflection, then it's a nightmarish one, and the impossibility of it all steals her voice, breath, and mind. The face she is looking at – her own face – is a hideous mask of something inhuman.

What should have been flawless skin is an artwork of chipped paint and peeling tapestry, black-fried at its torn edges. Where her eyes should be, are two glaring black holes instead, wild red light burning in their depth while something slimy curls around the inside, illuminated by the eerie glow. A shark-toothed grin splits her face in two, trails of blood on the otherwise white teeth and shrivelled lips pulled back too tight, revealing bloody gums. Skin hangs off her chin in strips as if those ghastly triangular teeth clove their way into her mouth over it. Her nose – oh, her nose! – is what you only see on bare skulls – three bony strips and black holes for nostrils, the skin around them burnt and rotting, and oozing with something dark. Small white worms squirm in the raw cracks and Mai would throw up, but her throat is painfully constricted.

"Look at me!" this ghastly being demands. "Look!"

That word echoes through Mai's head like a drum. _Look, look, look. Boom, boom, boom._ Her lips part to let out a howl of terror. She pulls back even further, her entire body into the motion and she loses her precarious balance, sliding down the glass and landing painfully across the narrow space. Bony claw-like hands with long crooked nails slam into the top part of the hourglass directly above her face, toppling it over. _Down_.

Mai falls as the hourglass falls and hits her head against the glass, cracking it open and spilling blood (but there is no blood), crumpling into a heap and twisting her neck. Her bones shatter from the impact with the glass wall (but she no longer has any bones), and her body burns with white-hot pain all over (but it's only an echo from the time when her soul still filled a physical body).

Sand falls down again. Sifts over her. Covers her. Makes it hard to breathe.

Mai struggles to get back upright. She strains and sprains her limbs, bruises her knees and elbows, hits her head over and over again, gets stuck no matter which way she turns, all the time wondering why the walls of the pyramid aren't caked in her blood yet. (_Fine dusty sand silently covers everything, erasing all trace of what was, is, and would come to be_.)

Once Mai is back to her initial kneeling position, the disfigured parody of her drops down opposite her on the other side of the glass, mimicking her perfectly. Claw-like fingers rest against the glass, red lights burn through black eye holes, and wind comes wheezing and bubbling through gaping nostrils. Her mouth opens in a sneer, letting out a split snake-tongue that curls and twists against the glass. Mai draws back in disgust. For some reason it seems to her that it wants to get in, that tongue, to touch her, to flick against her skin – one slow, saliva-dripping flick and…

The tongue draws back. After it, there comes a high-pitched voice.

_"Let me in."_

Mai gasps, pushes herself backwards even harder (_but there's nowhere for her to go, there never was_), and the creature on the outside pushes forward in a mirror action. The walls of the pyramid close in on Mai and she can't breathe.

"Let me in!" it demands in a whine, plastering itself against the glass. "You're dead, let me in."

_"No!"_

"Let me in, let me in, let me in," it rails.

(_"Let me out, let me out, let me out," Mai's mind echoes, but she doesn't want _out _anymore. Doesn't want to be on the same side of the glass as that _thing_._)

"No!"

"You drove me out, but I am you – the only you. The _real_ you."

"No! No, no, no, _no_…" Mai's voice dies out in a broken whisper.

Sand streams down relentlessly, burying everything, but in no haste to erase the terrifying mask of what used to be Mai's own face. Mai passes out to the wailing of the hideous parody of herself long before the heavy gold of silence buries her. (_And even in the silence there is that voice_.) With the last grains falling down and joining the rest, Bakura pushes the sand clock over again. It swings like a wheel of Fortune (exchanging ups for downs, highs for lows), like a wheel of life (of time) – empty side down, living side up. (_The half with the living being trapped in it_, _like his Ring_.)

Bakura watches sand filter through the opening and gather in a neat little pile at the bottom, watches it steadily grow and feels immensely satisfied. As he observes the slow progress, biding his time for an opportunity, a crack appears near the corner of the pyramid. He hastily steps back, blending with the shadows when the crack stretches diagonally across the surface and many more spring up alongside it. The illusion of the sunny beach freezes mid-motion before eroding all at once in a wisp of smoky shadows. But Malik himself, as Bakura had expected, doesn't appear, which can only mean one thing.

The cobweb of cracks weaves over the glass - barely a quarter of the sand has sifted down at this point. Without a warning, the hourglass shatters, glittering splinters raining all around, and sand comes crashing down in torrents, pulled by imperceptible gravity. Amid it all, Mai falls down head-first, hair fanning out and arms unfolding to fall toward the ground. Her body is still in that same bent position, but it slowly stretches out due to the new momentum. Bakura moves forward faster than a shadow, faster than fading light, quicker than a glitter of colour across a broken glass, and in his hand is a shard; one shard that cuts Mai's skin and worms its way under, resealing the cut flawlessly. As Mai falls, the light flickers out and everything disappears.

Bakura stands alone in the darkness, shadows coiling around him. _Another spiral_, he thinks, _has stretched further upward by a circle, a cycle_. Time carries its flow onward infinitely, and the mighty come falling down while one body regains a soul.

_But_ – Bakura sneers, as if it's the best joke he's heard in millennia (and to him, it might just be) – what kind of mindset has returned to its body? Shadows coil and slither around in silence and he is laughing, laughing, laughing…

He has just gained another ticket to crossing back over.

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><p><em>AN:_

**Ra's thousand hands** – the traditional way of depicting the Sun god: a disc with a multitude of hands reaching out to touch everyone living in blessing.

_Source__s cited/referenced_: "Der Bildhauer des Pharao" by Elisabeth Hering, and reproductions of ancient Egyptian artwork


End file.
